Tag Archives: brand sites

We’re loving Pinterest in my office. It’s a great tool for creating collaborative moodboards for inspiration. But brands are getting into even more of a lather about it than we are – and we can understand why. Here are six reasons that brands are going crazy for the internet’s newest darling.

1. Pinterest is the fastest growing standalone site ever

That’s right. Pinterest just hit 10 million unique visitors in the US faster than any standalone site ever. That’s impressive. And Pinterest seems to have hit its ‘hockey stick moment’, where growth goes from steady to huge. Any mass audience gathered together in one place is attractive to brands, and Pinterest is no exception.

2. Pinterest drives traffic to retailers

According to Mashable (via a study by Shareaholic), Pinterest is driving more traffic to retailers than Google+, YouTube, Reddit, MySpace and Linkedin combined. When considered in light of the huge growth Pinterest is experiencing (see point 1), this is only going to get greater – and brands can leverage this traffic to sell more product online.

3. It is easy for brand sites to integrate with Pinterest

The Pinterest ‘pin it’ button is SO easy to add to a product page on a brand or retail site – via a little bit of code – enabling users to pin directly from the brand site and therefore drive further traffic. Brands can not only profit from Pinterest, but fuel its growth – a virtuous circle.

4. Pinterest attracts female shoppers

According to TechCrunch, Pinterest’s growth is being propelled by ‘18-34 year old upper income women from the American heartland‘. It might be a cliche to say that women like to browse and take time to enjoy shopping, whilst men are more mission-oriented, but if that cliche holds, then Pinterest is the perfect stepping stone to a purchase – offering a fantastic browsing experience with a link to a retail or brand site when the user is ready to take the final step and make the purchase.

5. Optimal design – in more ways than one

There are two points to make about Pinterest’s design. First, it’s device neutral – the flexible design means it’s optimised for smart-phones through to wide-screen monitors – meaning it can benefit from mobile traffic just as much as desktop traffic. Second is that the layout feels instinctively more like a shop window – encouraging browsing behaviour (see point 4) and delivering up users that are more ready to buy. What’s more, their approach is being embraced by the wider web, and starting to become more and more widespread – witness what Mashable calls the ‘Pinterestification of the internet’.

6. Focus on product

There are no two ways about it, Pinterest pushes products. You might think you’re just re-pinning a cute teacup that reflects your esoteric taste, but your pin will help others find that product and buy it. People are actively creating Pinboards that act as wishlists – for birthdays, Christmas, weddings, or just that end-of-month payday. Because consumers are driving this, they are almost granting brands permission to get in on the act. Consider this: consumers don’t really use Facebook to post pictures of things they want – clothes, kitchenwear, books, whatever – and so when brands try to use Facebook for that it comes across as forced and corporate. But on Pinterest the environment is all about posting products: it’s a win scenario for brands.